Veigar/Strategy
Recommended Items Tips ;Playing As * Use Event Horizon to increase your chances of landing Dark Matter. * Veigar is extremely Mana and Cooldown Reduction dependent. Try buying items with these stats in order to increase the effectiveness of your passive and Baleful Strike. * Veigar is very fragile. It is valuable to select at least one summoner spell that can be used defensively. ;Playing Against * Dark Matter deals very high damage, but it can be avoided. Pay attention to the audio and visual indicators to be aware of when and where the spell will land. * Event Horizon only stuns units on the edge of its circle area. If you are inside the spell, you can still move and attack. * Veigar's ultimate deals increased damage based on your missing health. Tricks Ability Usage * strength as a mage comes from his overall high damage, the zoning potential and CC of his , and . This, combined with his theoretical infinite ability power stacking, makes him a dangerous opponent as a mage. ** suffers from low mobility and durability, making him reliant on his allies to protect him. His and are both delayed, making him especially vulnerable to being initiated upon as he will do little to nothing before his death. * If you don't already use smart cast, consider it when playing . His kit has high damage but is heavily reliant on landing his combo of spells as fast as possible; choosing smart cast will make it easier to use all spells at once, especially when using additional skills such as . * Consistent good usage of is key to success as , amassing ability power from minion and champion alike. ** Keep track of your mana pool, especially in the early game. If you simply use only to farm, the enemy will soon start to harass you; juggling between using with auto attacks on enemies while still farming minions is key to dominating a lane early game. ** Be firm about the . Having the extra CDR on will let you hit every minion with it and have the mana to sustain farming and harassing. ** Try to care about getting as much stacks as possible. The ability power you get from it as well as the reduced cooldown on is crucial to late game. ** Early ranks of have a higher cooldown, so remember to also use your auto-attacks to get last hits. ** Try to set up an in front of where an enemy will go, and then put down your , fire your at them, and finish the job with . If you have enough items, that will one-shot most squishy carries ** Try to dual last-hit minions for double the AP gain with when given the chance, as it will greatly speed up his rate of achieving dominance later in the game. With decent itemisation for AP you should be able to double-tap ranged minions from full health, or 1 ranged minion and 1 half-damaged melee minion. ** An easy way to last hit with is to let the tower hit melee minions twice then follow it with a . Let the tower hit caster minions once along with one auto attack and a . ** If possible, try to finish off enemy champions with . It'll give you 2 more AP, in addition to the passive AP gain after killing an enemy champion. ** Make use of the low cooldown of in the late game, as it will increase your damage output significantly. * is one of the strongest stuns in the game - it will interrupt dashes, stuns for seconds at max rank and is area of effect. With practice, it's easy to stun, cage, or zone at least 2-3 players. ** To escape, can be used to block off a choke point, or in the jungle an entire pathway. ** Consider further leveling of if the stun isn't holding enemies long enough for to land. This is usually due to or similar individual champion abilities. Since is one of the hardest hitting skills in your kit, it is another key to dominating your lane all so that you can farm using with less harassment from a passive enemy. ** Be wary that is no longer instantaneous and comes with a 0.5 second delay to cast, being unable to immediately stun as it used to with its edge. Unlike other stuns, it will interrupt dashes such as and , allowing to nuke them off-guard. ** Always be more cautious when is not available, as it is one of most important abilities. It has a long cooldown, making an easy target when it's unavailable, especially against enemies with high mobility and damage (like ). * You can use impact animation to corner your foes; place the spell near the champion but angled towards the direction in which he is most likely to retreat. ** Starting from level 4 of you can use it for killing half a whole minion wave, as it instantly kills minions by then. * Placing a ward at the enemy camp means you can use and to clear it whenever it spawns for easy gold and XP that the enemy jungler is denied. Care should be taken as to missing opponents and the location of the jungler when attempting this, however. * Using with can crush a low-MR carry before the enemy team can react. * Use to increase success rates in landing . Remember, enemies in the center can move into the stun-ring just to avoid . ** Large enemies are fish in a barrel; Champions such as , , or those affected by or may be unable to dodge a cast anywhere inside the ring. * When shoving the lane so you can recall or leave, consider using on the enemy minion line as it approaches, concentrating the minions to an area and then landing . * Practice using nuke combo in the right order, initiating with to stun, followed by , and if you're going for a kill, cast now, and lastly to pick up the kill for permanent extra AP. Due to being a targeted spell, it should always be used after casting since it is sure to always hit. ** Always check to make sure that there is no one blocking target if you're planning to use his nuke combo. can only hit up to two targets in a linear fashion, and will be wasted if there are more than one enemy in between, leaving his opponent alive for a time to escape or to counterattack. * An advanced tactic is to use before landing . While it is difficult to master, if you have aimed both spells correctly the enemy won’t be able to escape before the can land. * Another advanced tactic, you can sometimes use to bait an enemy with a skill / ability such as , place the stun just near them but without actually stunning them, they may activate their simply believing they are removing your stun and then still walk into your stun ring. Runes Usage gives Veigar a much active playstyle. * adds a lot of cextra burst damage to maximize his burst damage. will make his laning phase weaker. However, it allows Veigar to be much active for setting up . ** allows Veigar to heal back, specially because he usually take damage when farming with , due to its short range. ** gives additional movement speed, better for roaming and setting up team fights with . ** is very likely to be maintained with Zoe's normal range. offers offensive power in a much safer playstyle. * * Items * , benefits most from building ability power, cooldown reduction, and mana regeneration. However, due to his decent base damages and scalings, magic penetration in particular is an excellent stat for him. * Offensive items for are quite straight up flat AP items with a few that proc extra damage. Items that are not helpful to are items such as , & as the passives wont be useful enough. ** is a well-rounded first item, giving a large chunk of AP, mana, cooldown reduction as well as some flat magic penetration and gives Grievious Wounds to all enemies hit by . Useful for both oneshotting ADCs and chunking tanks. ** A is almost always a necessary item for as enemies will likely be building a lot of magic resist to survive your damage output, if you are having a good laning phase also consider buying this before a item, as you will have already stacked 100 ap from your alone, propelling you into your late game dominating mode fast. ** is a prime offensive item on , since it amplifies the ability power gained from . *** While is rarely built as a first item due to being very expensive and not very gold efficient without other AP items, Veigar's makes his AP increase constantly, making this item a viable first buy. Compared to the common start, this leaves you with no improvement on your mana or cooldowns, so make sure your ability casts count. ** or often gives Veigar stats he secretly likes, extra move speed, both give extra damage procs and also gives 10% cooldown. * 's damage applies to towers, and scales with Veigar's infinitely scaling AP. If you need to farm minions and/or are behind, building this item will allow you to quickly destroy enemy towers. Come late game, a single empowered autoattack can often deal roughly a third of a tower's health. * Because can just build AP from his farm, you can often afford to substitute offensive items with purely defensive or high utility loaded into them, and you can still leave the first few laning trips with more AP than the majority of other mages. * It is often viable gear on defensively, especially if you're carrying, the enemy will prioritize killing you and many team comps will lack strong initiation leaving you feeling like you have to initiate with your in order to get anything done, the following items are suggestions to help you get your burst out before you fall. ** can boost your health, the 's passive alone can help you sustain laning phases and combo's well with . ** can delay you getting burst down especially by AD orientated assassins in mid lane such as or . ** can help you to begin your combo, it can also help you survive close range mages. ** will also help your MR while giving you penetration. * as a mage has low mobility, high cooldowns and low mana regen, utility items can help, especially in terms of mana regen items. ** A couple of 's will allow to stay in lane to farm . ** is another route to take, besides granting mana regen it will also increase mana pool. A charged grants AP matched only by , and once transformed into , can be activated for a shield based on your current mana when in need for defense, note the changes to have delayed its power spike. Countering * Zoning during the laning phase will deny him from farming ability power from last-hitting minions with his as he is fairly squishy and weak at early game. ** This is important because if is allowed to farm and get items and ability power, his combo will be lethal late-game, being able to instantly kill almost champion. The only champions who can survive his combo are bruisers and tanks with a lot of health and magic resistance, and even then, it will take more than half of their health, leaving them low enough for any ally to pick them off. ** Unlike other champions with stats that can increase infinitely, such as and , Veigar is built with items that leave him very squishy himself. Due to this, it is imperative to avoid being stunned by ; if you dodge it, burst Veigar down. * Although deals massive damage, it has a considerable delay before it lands. Use this to avoid the spell. * Keep in mind that although will interrupt dashes, it will not stop dashes and abilities that explicitly state it is unstoppable, such as 's , 's , and 's . Along with and , they serve as one of the best counters to shut down when coordinated as a team. * If the wall of misses you during placement, avoid walking into the wall as it will still stun you for the full duration. * Pay attention to cooldowns. If Veigar uses or (or both), this is where he is the most vulnerable. Take the opportunity to kill him as fast as possible. * Always be on the move in the late game against a , as the cooldown on can be extremely low. * A common mistake amongst mages is to build when laning against Veigar, when they should build instead. While the extra damage will be missed due to not having magic penetration, the extra magic resist and tenacity are helpful due to . The sooner you get rid of the stun, the better chances you have to survive Veigar's combo. ** In fact, it is recommended to build on any champion on your team if there is a Veigar on the enemy team, as it will decrease the chances of him being able to land his mortal spell combo. * As a purely combo based mage, buying a is an excellent way to counter him as it essentially negates one of his spells, making him unable to initially unleash a full combo upon you. ** A is a cheaper but no less useful alternative, primarily as you can negate the stun from at will and thus avoid the standard follow-up . * If is giving you a hard time in early game if you are AP, try rushing a and build it into an as he will no longer be able to successfully harass you until he has his . Champions like with a naturally high magic resist have the advantage over . * If you are AD, is the option to build. * The majority of damage output is magic damage, hence items such as will mitigate his damage output by a large margin. also negates one of his spells, which is vital, since Veigar is a combo-based champion. * can leave allied champions completely immune to Veigar's combo, making somewhat of an indirect counter to him. But if Veigar decides to focus Kayle herself, if she is stunned by , she can't cast on herself, and will fall to his spells just like any other champion. * Becoming can save you from a burst combo. Spells like / and can prevent taking damage from burst combo. ** Champions like and can use their spell shields to avoid being stunned by , and will be able to out-duel . *A high crowd control champion, such as can use their CC to keep from contributing to fights with his abilities and prevent him from getting free AP with the passive of . Category:Champion strategies Category:Veigar